Entries Tagged 'Corruption' ↓

Many people feel that corporations can do better than governments in pricing public projects. And that’s true to an extent.

The problem is that big corporations can set prices above the true market prices of those services. As long as consumers can pay for public services (e.g., mailing packages, using electric power, and gas, mining valuable resources, etc. ) everything works well.

But what about those who cannot afford privatized services. They are not represented in the true market price of those public services. Those without enough money or credit to pay for privately made goods and services cannot “vote” on the type of goods or services they need.

Everything is traded in money markets now. This is why corporations have become so huge in this country and individual’s income so unequal. And worse, privatization is likely to end in in more illnesses and death to human beings than public services.

Consider the case in Texas this year where Texas’ uncooperative privatized power companies failed and people froze to death.

While Senator Cruz flew South to warmer climates, New York Representative Ocasio-Cortez flew South to Texas to launch a charitable fund drive to turn Texan’s power back on. And now there is the legislative push in Texas to interfere with women’s health care rights as well as well as make voting for quality government leaders harder for millions of people.

Also take the case of Greece a few years ago. While deeply in debt, that country was forced by the IMF to sell its valuable public services to vulture capitalists who could buy up all they desired. The Greek government was stripped of airports, public transportation and other basic infrastructure, as well extractions of its valuable resources so that investors in other countries in the world could grow rich—while the Greek people grew ever poorer.

Right now, the exit of France’s IMF leader, Christine Lagarde, to head the European Central Bank, the new head of the IMG has split the IMF’s Board by having favored China over the U.S. in the global trade wars. In particular, China is leading the world in the electric battery development and selling cars to Norway. And China has no shortage of workers like the U.S. does.

Here is an example of a government-controlled country that is far ahead of the U.S. in technology. It’s a government that isn’t going waste money like U.S. billionaires do to offer joy rides to civilians to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. China is building its infrastructure not only inside but also outside of its territory to help repair transportation routes through Central and Southern Asian countries for trade.

Privatization gets kudos for being more efficient than government, but as President Dwight D. Eisenhower once asked, is it more efficacious? More effective? No it is not!

For example, recently in the U.S. there was the privatization of ICE facilities and prisons that resulted in utter failures to treat citizens and border immigrants alike with humanitarian rights. Rapes, family disintegration, and unhygenic practices have horrified viewers who watch on TV the stripping of human beings of all dignity.

Vulture capitalists who are getting rich off of privatizing public goods and services are in it for the money; they do not have to care about what happens to the victims of their services.

These people pay lobbyists in all levels of our governments to satiate their greed with our blood. This results in massive corruption and neglect when those greedy people and their minions take over formerly democratic governments.

Not to mention lavish tax breaks for the rich and skyrocketing (literally nowadays) income inequality.

Privatization can be a good thing, but only if the institutions it builds have people with integrity running the show. No amount of truly free markets that serve everyone can exist unless the “good guys” are in charge. That was why Adam Smith posited that there must be an “invisible hand [of God]” behind free markets. But his days are long gone—well over 200 years gone.

During the Great Financial Recession and afterwards we have learned what happens when people without integrity are put in charge. Twelve years later it feels to me like Covid is not the only virus that was launched in the world this century. Both sicknesses are going to take a long time to control – if ever gotten under control.

Public Choice Theory

Public Choice Theory  was the brainchild, born in the mid-20th century by two professors, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock.  These two men were libertarians whose goal in the name of “freedom” was to diminish the  American government to a skeleton level and wipe out its bureacracy in favor of the private sector economy.

Tullock and Buchanan curried favor with wealthy conservative American donors who helped them hold lavish seminars in Florida during summers. The seminars were free for judges and law students. Here Tullock taught judges his theories of economics and politics.

In this century, Tullock’s  dream of converting judges in Florida has reached fruition in the current Supreme Court and the federal courts that we are now seeing.

The Public Choice Approach

Public choice is also called preference voting. Tullock proselytized public choice voting. His words spread among American universities and even over to the pond to a Russian college. Under the moniker of Ranked-Choice voting was recently used in Maine elections.

Gordon Tullock, like Steve Bannon in our century, realized that public choice voting was a way that political minority groups could gain power over majorities. Continue reading →

Thanks to the incessant drone of the media and and social media this century there is a huge split between the “right” and “left” in the U.S.

I look at that split and I feel it only goes to serve the ends of the wealthy to become even wealthier at the expense of the rest of us. Here’s how.

Coronavirus-19 seems to have accelerated that split even faster as we watch the death count in our country rising more and more each day. 

If you don’t believe that corruption lies in D.C. take a look at the chart I just posted on Brucenomics. 

In four weeks, the cream of trillions of dollars was skimmed off by Wall Street, while our President said, “Let them drink disinfectant,” and he urged us to go on contaminating each other by not wearing masks. 

Now on the second-and third- rounds of the “stimulus”, things haven’t changed much. Public corporations are getting money and so are foreign students. The death rates are still underestimated and tests and PPE supplies undelivered.

Now our President is promising a miracle cure in just months. Let’s take a look at the left and right responses to this. Continue reading →